3pointD.com

I recently had the opportunity to have a drink with Ian and Roo from the always interesting eightbar blog and learned that there were more than 200 IBM’ers running around in the virtual world of Second Life — not because they’d been sent there or were part of a project, but just because IBM is full of curious technologists and many of them have ended up with SL avatars. One very cool result of this, and of the interest of IBM technical strategist and innovation guru Irving Wladawsky-Berger, has been that Roo and Ian are now officially charged with checking out SL on behalf of IBM, rather than simply stealing a few virtual moments when they’re meant to be working on more important stuff. Another result is that IBM are throwing themselves a “virtual block party” in the virtual world tomorrow, on their Almaden sim. I don’t think it’s open to the public, but it is open to IBM alumni (of which the company has several hundred more as of a few days ago). What will be interesting will be to see exactly what kind of development work these kind of events can galvanize.

For those (like me) who haven’t already checked out Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson’s new book, The Long Tail, or who just want to know more about it, straight from the author’s mouth, you can see Anderson give a talk about hsi vision of the future of business this Friday at 10:30am SL time, when Wagner James Au will interview him at the new Wired installation being built on the Millions of Us sim. Yes, Wired too is coming to Second Life, and will probably throw themselves a more proper party on Saturday, I hear. The big question: Is there room enough in the sim for both Wired and CNet? Or will Chris Anderson and Daniel Terdiman soon come to virtual blows?